To Isaiah’s disgust, Ahaz was unwilling to take the risk of following his counsel; the king chose instead to submit to Tiglathpileser and become a vassal of Assyria, which promptly invaded the territories of Damascus and Israel and deported large numbers of their inhabitants. By 733, Israel had been reduced to a small city-state based on Samaria, with a puppet king on the throne. It was not the policy of Assyria to impose its religion upon its vassals, but Ahaz seems to have wanted to make some kind of cultic gesture to his new overlord. An Assyrian-style altar replaced the old altar of sacrifice in the Temple courtyard, and henceforth there would be a new enthusiasm in Judah for cults involving the sun, moon, and constellations, which were appearing at this time in other parts of the Near East.
Isaiah had little time for Ahaz, but the king had at least saved his country. The same cannot be said for the child whom Isaiah had hailed as Emanu-El: Hezekiah succeeded his father in about 716, and, D tells us approvingly, he devoted himself to Yahweh alone. He closed down all the bamoth dedicated to other gods, tore down the matzevot, and smashed the bronze serpent in the Hekhal of the Jerusalem Temple. The Chronicler tells us that the priests took a leading role in this reform movement and threw out the paraphernalia of the foreign cults that had crept into the Temple. He also says that Hezekiah ordered all the people of Israel and Judah to assemble in Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, a feast that had hitherto been held in the home.29 This is unlikely, since the Passover was not celebrated in the Temple until the late sixth century; the Chronicler was probably projecting the religious practices of his own day back onto Hezekiah, about whom he is most enthusiastic. In fact, we do not know exactly what Hezekiah intended by this reform: it seems to have had no lasting effect. He may have been trying to dissociate himself from the syncretizing policies of his father and to take the first steps toward throwing off Assyrian hegemony. The story of his summoning the people of Israel to Jerusalem could indicate that he had dreams of reviving the United Kingdom, as Isaiah had foretold. Israel was no longer a threat, and there must have been a certain schadenfreude in Judah about the demise of this former enemy. For the first time since the split, Judah was in the stronger position, and by summoning the remaining Israelites to the city of David, Hezekiah may have been nurturing Isaiah’s messianic vision.
If there were such hopes, however, they were definitively crushed in 722 when, after a futile revolt against Assyria, Samaria was defeated and destroyed by Shalmaneser V. The Kingdom of Israel was reduced to an Assyrian province called Samerina. Over 27,000 Israelites were deported to Assyria and were never heard of again. They were replaced by people from Babylon, Cuthnah, Arad, Hamah, and Sephoraim, who worshipped Yahweh, the god of their new country, alongside their own gods. Henceforth the name “Israel” could no longer be used to describe a geographical region, and it survived as a purely cultic term in Judah. But not all the Israelites had been deported. Some stayed behind in their old towns and villages and tried, with the help of the new colonists, to rebuild their devastated country. Others probably came to Judah as refugees and settled in and around Jerusalem. They brought with them ideas that may have been current in the north for some time and that would have a significant effect on the ideology of Jerusalem.
Perhaps because of such an influx from the former Israel, Jerusalem seems to have expanded to three or four times its former size by the end of the eighth century. Two new suburbs were built: one on the Western Hill opposite the Temple, which became known as the Mishneh—the Second City. The other developed in the Tyropoeon Valley and was called the Makhtesh—the Hollow. The new Assyrian king Sargon II adopted more liberal policies toward his vassals, which gave Jerusalem special privileges and economic advantages. But instead of learning from the fate of the northern kingdom, Hezekiah seems to have let his prosperity go to his head. When Sargon died in 705, Jerusalem was at the center of a new coalition of discontented vassals who hoped to throw off the Assyrian yoke: he was joined by the kings of Tyre and Ashkelon, and Egypt’s pharaoh gave promises of help. Another rebellious coalition had sprung up in Mesopotamia, led by Merodach-baladan, King of Babylon, who sent envoys to Jerusalem to inspect its storehouses and fortifications. Hezekiah made elaborate preparations for war. He improved the water supply by digging a new tunnel, seventeen hundred feet long, through the bedrock from the Gihon to the Pool of Siloam and had built a new city wall to protect this pool and, perhaps, the Mishneh. He was clearly proud of his military capability in a way that was far removed from the spirit of the Jerusalem “Poor.”
He soon realized the folly of his arrogance: it was impossible for Jerusalem to withstand the power of Assyria. Once Sennacherib, the new king, had quelled the revolts in Babylon and other parts of Mesopotamia, he began to move westward toward Jerusalem. Egypt sent no troops, Transjordan and Phoenicia went down like dominoes before the Assyrian army, and finally, Sennacherib’s soldiers arrived outside the city. Hezekiah sent gifts and tribute in an attempt to stave off the disaster, but to no avail. The prophet Micah, a disciple of Isaiah, foretold that Jerusalem would soon be reduced to a heap of rubble and Zion would become a plowed field.30 But Isaiah still insisted that all was not lost: Yahweh, the fortress of Zion, would protect his city. Reliance upon diplomacy and military preparations had indeed proved futile, but Yahweh’s presence would repel the enemy.31 And, against all odds, Isaiah’s predictions were dramatically fulfilled. We are not sure what happened. The Chronicler simply says that Yahweh sent his “angel” to destroy the Assyrian army and Sennacherib was forced to return home.32 The most reasonable explanation was that the Assyrians were decimated by plague, but nobody in Jerusalem wanted to hear prosaic facts. They naturally saw this deliverance as a miracle. Yahweh had indeed proved to be a mighty warrior who had brought salvation to his people, as the cult had always proclaimed.
This extraordinary event had a fatal effect upon the politics of Jerusalem. In former years, such kings as Rehoboam and Asa had saved their city by natural diplomacy. They did not believe that the cult of Yahweh on Zion permitted them to throw caution to the winds; on the contrary, they had a duty to fight with every weapon in their power against their enemy, joining their effort to the titanic struggle of Yahweh. But later generations of Jerusalemites felt that the impregnability of their city was such that they would be saved by miraculous intervention—a form of religiosity that reduces spirituality to magic. Hezekiah was hailed as a hero after Sennacherib’s retreat, but his reckless policy had brought his country to the brink of ruin. In the Assyrian annals, Sennacherib claimed that he had plundered forty-six of Hezekiah’s walled cities and innumerable villages; a large percentage of the population had been deported and Hezekiah had lost almost all his territory. Jerusalem was once again a small city-state. It was a hard legacy for his small son Manasseh, who came to the throne in 698 and ruled in Jerusalem for fifty-five years. The biblical writers regard Manasseh as the worst king Jerusalem ever had. To distance himself from Hezekiah, he entirely reversed his father’s religious policies, seeking Judah’s greater integration within the region and abandoning a dangerous particularity. He set up altars to Baal and reestablished the bamoth in the countryside. The practice of human sacrifice was instituted in the Valley of Hinnom, which henceforth retained an aura of horror. An effigy of Asherah was installed in the Temple, possibly in the Devir itself, and in the courtyard Manasseh built houses for the sacred prostitutes. Zion was now dedicated to the fertility cult of Asherah; there were also altars to other astral deities.33 The most fervent Yahwists were naturally appalled by these measures, but they were probably acceptable to some of the people. We know from the prophet Hosea that the fertility cult of Baal had been widespread in the northern kingdom before 722. But for over 270 years, Yahweh had been the Elyon in Jerusalem, and to the prophets who predicted dire punishments this dethronement was rank apostasy and gross ingratitude for the deliverance of 701. Yet Manasseh probably believed that it was essential to appease Assyria and to abjure the Yahwistic chauvinism of his father. His long reign gave Judah time to recuperate and Manasseh was able to
